Kim OHara wrote:You're quite right that the opening is overly sensationalist. On the other hand, if you were surprised by that, you have been avoiding mass media more successfully than I have.

Kim, I'm afraid I don't understand how these hands are attached to the same body; I don't see the connection.

Kim OHara wrote:... your last sentence worries me a little. I don't like to exclude other ways of looking at things, but I do think that science offers us the best way of examining and understanding the physical world, and that putting religious perspectives on an equal footing in this role leads to nonsense like Creationism, which in turn weakens the credibility of science where it is needed.
What science doesn't do, and can't do, is provide the moral perspective we need. "What can we do here?" has scientific/rational answers. "What should we do here?" doesn't.

With respect, straw man arguments are more in keeping with Justin Gillis, the author of the quoted opinion piece. Re-reading it with a little more discrimination gives me to think that this is not journalism, but activism. Fine if is, but just say so.

There are more religions in the world than Christianity and within Christianity are more views than Creationism. Taoist, Buddhist, Islam...all world religions should be being heard about this issue of climate change, as should all the major philosophical schools. And bring in the arts, let's see what some creativity can add to the mix. Not just in this issue, but in all the larger issues humanity is dealing with.

Big issues need response from all corners. It's a big world out there.

Kim OHara wrote:You're quite right that the opening is overly sensationalist. On the other hand, if you were surprised by that, you have been avoiding mass media more successfully than I have.

Kim, I'm afraid I don't understand how these hands are attached to the same body; I don't see the connection.

Just that sensationalising an issue to grab the reader's attention is (sadly) standard journalistic practice, especially in commercial media.

Kim OHara wrote:... your last sentence worries me a little. I don't like to exclude other ways of looking at things, but I do think that science offers us the best way of examining and understanding the physical world, and that putting religious perspectives on an equal footing in this role leads to nonsense like Creationism, which in turn weakens the credibility of science where it is needed.
What science doesn't do, and can't do, is provide the moral perspective we need. "What can we do here?" has scientific/rational answers. "What should we do here?" doesn't.

With respect, straw man arguments are more in keeping with Justin Gillis, the author of the quoted opinion piece. Re-reading it with a little more discrimination gives me to think that this is not journalism, but activism. Fine if is, but just say so.

No straw man, FallAway - but perhaps a lack of clarity.
I will try again, making the emphasis stronger: science offers us the best way of examining and understanding the physical world, and that putting religious perspectives on an equal footing in this role leads to nonsense ...

There are more religions in the world than Christianity and within Christianity are more views than Creationism. Taoist, Buddhist, Islam...all world religions should be being heard about this issue of climate change, as should all the major philosophical schools. And bring in the arts, let's see what some creativity can add to the mix. Not just in this issue, but in all the larger issues humanity is dealing with.

Big issues need response from all corners. It's a big world out there.

Absolutely!
As I said, science can't tell us what we should do, nor can it give us reasons for doing it.

Kim OHara wrote:I will try again, making the emphasis stronger: science offers us the best way of examining and understanding the physical world, and that putting religious perspectives on an equal footing in this role leads to nonsense ...

I almost have to laugh Kim, when both of us know that the best way of examining and understanding the physical world is to see it all as illusion. However, conventional reality needs attending to in a more conventional way.

If you are saying that a religious perspective is not a science perspective (and again, leaving out Buddhism and its connections to present day quantum physics) I agree. But it sounds like you are saying that scientists have a superior knowledge because they investigate the physical world. I maintain that equal footing is needed, not measured by factual knowledge of the worldly world, but measured by the fact itself that humans have a spiritual dimension to them, one that science continues to say doesn't count. And again, I will mention that philosophy and the arts have equal contributions to make in understanding.

The public should be provided with a well-rounded view of climate change and reasoned arguments from both sides. This is only fair. If all the public can now count on are biased and sensationalized opinion pieces trying to come across as scientific argument, we are all facing this with a collectively skewed mind.

...science can't tell us what we should do, nor can it give us reasons for doing it.

And yet, that is just what is happening is it not? And the reason they indeed are giving us is delivered with the fear factor - we're all going to die, unless we listen to science alone.

FallAway wrote:..........
...........
........... But it sounds like you are saying that scientists have a superior knowledge because they investigate the physical world. ........
............

When it comes to predicting a total eclipse of the sun I think it is obvously clear that scientists have a superior knowledge.
When it comes to understanding how light from the sun interacts with the atmosphere and the surface of the earth and how the heating and cooling of the earth works I think it is obvously clear that scientists have a superior knowledge.
When it comes to understanding how light can strike a surface and generate electrical energy I think that it is obviously clear that science has superior knowledge.
When it comes to understanding how exhaust gases from internal combustions engines causes cancer I think it is obvously clear that science has superior knowledge.
Etc.
chownah

FallAway wrote:...The public should be provided with a well-rounded view of climate change and reasoned arguments from both sides ...

"Both sides"? Which sides did you have in mind?

Both sides being the side that argues that climate change is an imminent threat to humanity created by humanity, and the side that argues that climate change is a process of change in the physical world that involves change to planetary life.

chownah wrote:FallAway wrote:

But it sounds like you are saying that scientists have a superior knowledge because they investigate the physical world...

chownah wrote:When it comes to predicting a total eclipse of the sun I think it is obvously clear that scientists have a superior knowledge.
When it comes to understanding how light from the sun interacts with the atmosphere and the surface of the earth and how the heating and cooling of the earth works I think it is obvously clear that scientists have a superior knowledge.
When it comes to understanding how light can strike a surface and generate electrical energy I think that it is obviously clear that science has superior knowledge.
When it comes to understanding how exhaust gases from internal combustions engines causes cancer I think it is obvously clear that science has superior knowledge.
Etc.

Science knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the scientific paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

Religion knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the religious paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

Philosophy knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the philosophical paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

Art knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the humanities paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

My position is that the knowledge accrued through all these paradigm is of equal worth; one accretion is not superior to the other.

FallAway wrote:
My position is that the knowledge accrued through all these paradigm is of equal worth; one accretion is not superior to the other.

When it comes to explaining climate change (what this topic is based on ....I guess) their worth is not equal.
chownah

That is your opinion Chownah and I respect it. For myself, climate change is explained satisfactorily by my understanding of impermanence and change, posited by a religion.

The thread seems to have begun with thoughts about changing attitudes about global warming and, like most threads of this genre do, has evolved to include other areas within. I've no problem with that...attitudes are based on beliefs so discussion around this seems natural enough.

FallAway wrote:...The public should be provided with a well-rounded view of climate change and reasoned arguments from both sides ...

"Both sides"? Which sides did you have in mind?

Seems to me the two sides to climate change are those who care and those who don't. Interestingly enough there are a few ways it will go: care and do something about it, care but do nothing about (except care really hard), not care and do nothing, and also not care but still make environmentally conscious decisions.

For me, I don't care that the planet is warming, at all, but I incline towards the advice of super serious pencil-in-the-ear science hippies because such practices certainly seem more reasonable and respectful, not just to the environment (as was my first reason for doing so), but also to the damn hippies. So yeah, your science reports and math numbers and graphs with lines that skyrocket off the page, overdue it for me. You could all easily be fudging that crap, but what you can't fake are the faces on the college students that go door to door in my neighborhood all year long; the desperation and the fear on the faces of those who really do believe. I do it for them because I know they think it is true and I know that they care. And I care about their sincerity.

Perhaps some of you climate change warriors are just a bit too drunk on your science papers to remember that connecting with a person, in person, not only shows them the embodiment of this concern but also shows them that they are worthy enough to be spoken to about like a human being rather than guilt-tripped onto the bandwagon with fancy shmancy science papers from fancy organizations which fail to realize that some people aren't impressed, nor intimidated, by science words. But who needs those people anyway, right? Just steamroll them, leave them in the dust for not submitting, and sleep well knowing that there really is only one side that matters in the climate change debate.

FallAway wrote:Science knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the scientific paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

Religion knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the religious paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

Philosophy knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the philosophical paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

Art knows what it knows. The knowledge accrued within the humanities paradigm is useful and of import to humanity.

My position is that the knowledge accrued through all these paradigm is of equal worth; one accretion is not superior to the other.

Thank you for articulating your position so clearly. I don't want to disagree, either, so much as to expand on it.
I'm happy to say that in general terms "one accretion is not superior to the other" but I want to take one more step and add, "but one may be far more useful than the others for certain tasks," which I think is what Chownah was saying. A bed is not superior to a bicycle, for instance, but the bed is far better for sleeping on than the bicycle, and the bicycle is far more useful as a means of transport.
Science is very good at describing the (conventional) physical world and predicting what will happen if we make particular changes to it; religion and philosophy aren't good at that that, and art can do well with the description but not so well with the prediction. (It can depict a prediction, but that's a slightly different thing.)
That makes science a better tool for understanding what's (already) happening to the climate than any of the others. Beyond that, it's also very good for telling us what's likely to happen in the future if we keep on doing what we've been doing, or if we all swap our cars for bicycles, or if we replant all the forests we've cut down. So far, so good for science. But it can't provide any moral or ethical reason for one course or another (although it's often asked to).
That's where philosophy and religion come into their own, saying things like, "We should do X because anything else increases human suffering and suffering is a Bad Thing."
But how do we get people to do X? Religion might help (saying, e.g., "if you don't do X you are a bad person") but art can step up and dramatise the issues and consequences far more vividly than science can do, and more universally than religion can do.

SDC wrote:Seems to me the two sides to climate change are those who care and those who don't. Interestingly enough there are a few ways it will go: care and do something about it, care but do nothing about (except care really hard), not care and do nothing, and also not care but still make environmentally conscious decisions.

For me, I don't care that the planet is warming, at all, but I incline towards the advice of super serious pencil-in-the-ear science hippies because such practices certainly seem more reasonable and respectful, not just to the environment (as was my first reason for doing so), but also to the damn hippies. So yeah, your science reports and math numbers and graphs with lines that skyrocket off the page, overdue it for me. You could all easily be fudging that crap, but what you can't fake are the faces on the college students that go door to door in my neighborhood all year long; the desperation and the fear on the faces of those who really do believe. I do it for them because I know they think it is true and I know that they care. And I care about their sincerity.

Perhaps some of you climate change warriors are just a bit too drunk on your science papers to remember that connecting with a person, in person, not only shows them the embodiment of this concern but also shows them that they are worthy enough to be spoken to about like a human being rather than guilt-tripped onto the bandwagon with fancy shmancy science papers from fancy organizations which fail to realize that some people aren't impressed, nor intimidated, by science words. But who needs those people anyway, right? Just steamroll them, leave them in the dust for not submitting, and sleep well knowing that there really is only one side that matters in the climate change debate.

If you're including me among those "climate change warriors" you're a bit off target. Ditto if you're including most climate scientists.
One young climate activist sketched her strategy for shifting public opinion like this: it grades the population according to a sequence from ‘actively opposed’ to doing anything about climate change, through ‘passively opposed’, ‘neutral’ and ‘passively supporting’ to ‘actively supporting’ action on the issue. And her approach is to forget the active denialists (because they are a tiny group and won’t change anyway) and try to move everyone else one step to the right in her chart – ‘passively opposed’ to ‘neutral’, ‘neutral’ to ‘passively supporting’, or ‘passively supporting’ to ‘actively supporting’.
In that scheme, the denialists are the only people any campaigner - including me - would be willing to "steamroll" and "leave in the dust" (and even then, we might be sorry for them). The middle groups cop the barrage of science facts, because those who know how serious the situation is are "actively supporting" action - as I am now.
As for personal contact ... this is the internet. In meatspace I do talk to anyone and everyone, just as I do here, at whatever level seems most appropriate.

Kim OHara wrote:That makes science a better tool for understanding what's (already) happening to the climate than any of the others. Beyond that, it's also very good for telling us what's likely to happen in the future if we keep on doing what we've been doing, or if we all swap our cars for bicycles, or if we replant all the forests we've cut down. So far, so good for science. But it can't provide any moral or ethical reason for one course or another (although it's often asked to).
That's where philosophy and religion come into their own, saying things like, "We should do X because anything else increases human suffering and suffering is a Bad Thing."
But how do we get people to do X? Religion might help (saying, e.g., "if you don't do X you are a bad person") ...

Kim

Here's a great example which just popped up on FB:

Earlier in August, six faith leaders meet with Australia’s environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg. Our group includes Bishop Philip Huggins, the president of the National Council of Churches, a Uniting Church reverend, a rabbi, a Catholic nun and an ordained Buddhist. This is not the start of a joke, but a polite and serious exchange.
It might seem that religion has little to do with the environment or energy. Yet each of us at the meeting wants to raise a matter that, when we consider the deepest values of our respective traditions, is of grave moral concern: the proposed Adani coal mine. We are there to ask the minister to revoke its environmental licence.
￼The delegation reminds the minister that a number of faith leaders from across Australia wrote him an open letter about it on 5 May, to which he has not yet replied.
Around the world a great many people of faith are deeply concerned about the climate crisis. Despite the reactionary nature of some in the USA, faith leaders are almost completely united and supportive of the science. The pope has issued his famous encyclical, Laudato Si, faith leaders were part of the successful movement in the US to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dalai Lama has spoken of the need for strong action. The co-founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, is a mild-mannered Methodist Sunday school teacher.
Of course, the faith traditions do not have a monopoly on morality. There are very proud secular and indigenous traditions in this struggle that we honour and respect. Yet we do have much to offer when it comes to ethics and morals. And on this issue, there is a significant groundswell.

I've been kind of optimistic since beginning a transition to veganism and reading too many hopeful Futurism articles but this is just depressing. Read the whole article to take in the full and dreadful mood of near-inevitable-apocalypse based angst. Hopefully the upper estimates will not obtain.

Intro:

It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.

Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

- for the future that we may have lost

"I don't envision a single thing that, when developed & cultivated, leads to such great benefit as the mind. The mind, when developed & cultivated, leads to great benefit."

"I don't envision a single thing that, when undeveloped & uncultivated, brings about such suffering & stress as the mind. The mind, when undeveloped & uncultivated, brings about suffering & stress."

I've been kind of optimistic since beginning a transition to veganism and reading too many hopeful Futurism articles but this is just depressing. Read the whole article to take in the full and dreadful mood of near-inevitable-apocalypse based angst. Hopefully the upper estimates will not obtain.

Intro:

It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.

Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

- for the future that we may have lost

Yes, it's likely to be very bad.
But the thing that keeps me engaged with the issue is that it is never going to be too late to make it less bad than it would otherwise be. Sure, it would have been better if we had made serious changes earlier. (We knew enough about the impending problem by 1990 to have started making useful changes but we didn't, which neatly illustrates the difference between science and motivation, and now it will be harder.) But that's what we have to deal with, so let's do it. If we don't act now, it will be even worse in twenty years' time than if we give it all we've got.
And let's not worry about 'the end of the century', because the effects are already here and things are likely to get much worse, very quickly, if we don't change course.
The one that's catching everyone's attention is extreme weather - how a small shift in average temperature translates into a big increase in heatwaves, droughts, rainstorm intensity, wildfires, etc. Hansen saw this back in 2012 https://thinkprogress.org/james-hansen- ... 86296c140/ and predicted that it would get worse, and it has ... and it will continue to do so.
Sea level change may be inexorable but it's slow in comparison and far more predictable.

I was fairly alarmed about the environment when i was younger, but that pretty much subsided into resignation. I dont beleive that we as a species have the ability to constrain ourselves, not assigning any blame, we are just biologically programmed to use all the available resources.

As an example an early human pregnant woman encountering a bush loaded with ripe berries would have gorged herself, no thoughts of sharing or the future, just doing whats right in that moment to ensure the survival of her child, her biological programming would have demanded that she do that.

Over the last five years i have gotten even less hopeful, with trump and his minions in charge.

We are basically hungry, selfish monkeys.

I live in a country that isnt far from a slide into complete fascism, next week, next month and next year are about as much as i can worry about. Long term, i dont really believe the species has a future. AI might save us, if they dont kill us as an unnecessary inconvenience.

“The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.” ― Robert M. Pirsig

SDC wrote:Seems to me the two sides to climate change are those who care and those who don't. Interestingly enough there are a few ways it will go: care and do something about it, care but do nothing about (except care really hard), not care and do nothing, and also not care but still make environmentally conscious decisions.

For me, I don't care that the planet is warming, at all, but I incline towards the advice of super serious pencil-in-the-ear science hippies because such practices certainly seem more reasonable and respectful, not just to the environment (as was my first reason for doing so), but also to the damn hippies. So yeah, your science reports and math numbers and graphs with lines that skyrocket off the page, overdue it for me. You could all easily be fudging that crap, but what you can't fake are the faces on the college students that go door to door in my neighborhood all year long; the desperation and the fear on the faces of those who really do believe. I do it for them because I know they think it is true and I know that they care. And I care about their sincerity.

Perhaps some of you climate change warriors are just a bit too drunk on your science papers to remember that connecting with a person, in person, not only shows them the embodiment of this concern but also shows them that they are worthy enough to be spoken to about like a human being rather than guilt-tripped onto the bandwagon with fancy shmancy science papers from fancy organizations which fail to realize that some people aren't impressed, nor intimidated, by science words. But who needs those people anyway, right? Just steamroll them, leave them in the dust for not submitting, and sleep well knowing that there really is only one side that matters in the climate change debate.

If you're including me among those "climate change warriors" you're a bit off target. Ditto if you're including most climate scientists.

I think there are a lot of people who are passive about it who receive the same treatment as denialists just because they aren't charging after the bandwagon, and that is exactly what I get from your comment about "sides"; as if there is no legitimate position aside from the numbers and how dare anyone suggest otherwise. If you meant something else, I apologize, but it seems that was the point you were trying to make.

SDC wrote:Seems to me the two sides to climate change are those who care and those who don't. Interestingly enough there are a few ways it will go: care and do something about it, care but do nothing about (except care really hard), not care and do nothing, and also not care but still make environmentally conscious decisions.

For me, I don't care that the planet is warming, at all, but I incline towards the advice of super serious pencil-in-the-ear science hippies because such practices certainly seem more reasonable and respectful, not just to the environment (as was my first reason for doing so), but also to the damn hippies. So yeah, your science reports and math numbers and graphs with lines that skyrocket off the page, overdue it for me. You could all easily be fudging that crap, but what you can't fake are the faces on the college students that go door to door in my neighborhood all year long; the desperation and the fear on the faces of those who really do believe. I do it for them because I know they think it is true and I know that they care. And I care about their sincerity.

Perhaps some of you climate change warriors are just a bit too drunk on your science papers to remember that connecting with a person, in person, not only shows them the embodiment of this concern but also shows them that they are worthy enough to be spoken to about like a human being rather than guilt-tripped onto the bandwagon with fancy shmancy science papers from fancy organizations which fail to realize that some people aren't impressed, nor intimidated, by science words. But who needs those people anyway, right? Just steamroll them, leave them in the dust for not submitting, and sleep well knowing that there really is only one side that matters in the climate change debate.

If you're including me among those "climate change warriors" you're a bit off target. Ditto if you're including most climate scientists.

I think there are a lot of people who are passive about it who receive the same treatment as denialists just because they aren't charging after the bandwagon, and that is exactly what I get from your comment about "sides"; as if there is no legitimate position aside from the numbers and how dare anyone suggest otherwise. If you meant something else, I apologize, but it seems that was the point you were trying to make.

Kim OHara wrote:
Umm ... it wasn't my comment about "sides" but FallAaway's: https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?p=434830#p434738. I was trying to get some sense of what FallAway meant by "both sides" when you jumped in, defined two sides, and articulated your position around them.

Kim

I actually thought your counter question to FA was a clever way to make your point that the denialists weren't worth speaking to. I disagreed, but it was clever and direct.

But, like I said, if you meant something else, I apologize. Sometimes I get carried away with our typical banter. But I still think I was right...